


your breath was courage laced with alcohol

by portions_forfox



Category: Saturday Night Live RPF
Genre: AU, F/M, please don't ask me what i'm doing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-17
Updated: 2013-01-17
Packaged: 2017-11-26 16:29:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/652224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/portions_forfox/pseuds/portions_forfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Academia!AU. dysfunctional professors at a mediocre establishment getting drunk and generally behaving worse than their students! with lorne michaels as the always-exasperated head of faculty trying to keep control.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your breath was courage laced with alcohol

**Author's Note:**

  * For [herbalistic](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=herbalistic).



> oops, i used the prompt as the summary, lol! i literally just wrote this. i don't know...what's happening? this is for [](http://herbalistic.livejournal.com/profile)[**herbalistic**](http://herbalistic.livejournal.com/)'s above-quoted prompt at [](http://falseeeyelashes.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://falseeeyelashes.livejournal.com/)**falseeeyelashes** ' rpf ficathon. and no i don't have an explanationnnnn. apparently i cannot get enough of rpf AUs now.

Lorne calls a meeting in the staff room. Again.

“It has come to my attention,” he announces, “that a certain professor in this room may or may not have had inappropriate relations with a certain Spanish exchange student.” There’s a pause, and then he adds, like he’s just remembering, “…which is not acceptable.”

In the back of the room Jimmy leans into Tina’s space, too far in, too close as always—“Gee, and we’ll all have to guess who _that_ is,” he whispers, his tugged-up lips, Tina’s rolled eyes.

Lorne drones on and Sudeikis leans in on her other side: “ _She was Portuguese_.”

 

 

 

 

 

If you get Amy drunk enough—which isn’t really that hard, especially if you’ve got the Two Surefire Tools For Getting Amy Poehler Wasted, which are as follows: one, peach schnapps; two, Seth Meyers—then she’ll start to tell you about what she calls ‘the legend of Thomas McCall University.’ “You think Lorne’s been here the longest?” she’ll ask you, leaning her arm across the bar counter with that quasi-sneer painting her face red, and in this case it’s that Teacher’s Aid with the Jew-fro and the Jew-nose and the general Jew-ness, Samberg.

“Jesus, Amy, go easy on him,” Seth’ll say, but his eyes never really back that up; always crinkled at her, always drawn in.

“No, fuck it,” she waves him off, smile breaking wider, “You think it’s Lorne, kid? Yeah?”

Andy looks kind of nervous; shrugs it off. Thinks maybe he should’ve sat somewhere else. “Yeah, I guess,” he decides. “Hasn’t he?”

That’s when Amy’s grin lifts and curls to one side, breaking out, and for a moment if you look closely you can see Meyers, on her other side, flick his eyes down to her mouth. Lick his lips, subconsciously.

“Nah,” Amy responds, and shakes a stern finger at him. “It’s _O’Brien._ ” She turns back to the bar and lifts up her beer, bringing it closer to her lips—“He’s been here longer than me, Samberg. And longer than Fey and longer than Lorne and longer than Thomas R. McCall himself. You know what I think?” and she waves an arm around, untethered. “I think he’s been here since the original goddamnéd gangle of redheaded miscreants we so fondly know as the Irish Catholics first wandered up the Hudson to our dear Boston town.”

Andy nods, polite. “I hear his class is hard,” he offers—an attempt to contribute just about anything to this one-person conversation. “I hear he doesn’t like anyone.”

“That’s not true,” Amy corrects, just swallowing a gulp of beer. “He likes Tina.”

“Everybody likes Tina,” Seth cuts in (the noise around his head, the hoards of people, the music—his arm beside Amy’s, warm).

“Yeah,” Amy says, and _watch_ : if you look closely you can see her eyes dart once across the room, a single cursory glance, to Jimmy Fallon.

She brings the beer glass to her lips. “They do.”

 

 

 

 

 

Tina used to go here back when Lorne was still teaching. (O’Brien was teaching too, but he was _always_ teaching and he’s still teaching and he’ll always _be_ teaching.) She never got drunk. She never got high. She scored well on every test yet did not purport to like her teachers in the slightest.

Lorne (already considers himself her mentor) pulled her aside once, just before graduation: “I want you to teach here, Tina.”

She didn’t even hesitate. “Yeah, well. I want to do better.” Bright eyes. Young face.

Maybe it was mean. She looked too pretty with her hair done right. “Yeah?” he said, raised eyebrows—“Try.” She did.

And she drinks now.

 

 

 

 

 

If you want to get Amy mad, mention the fact that the only reason she even _has_ this job, the only reason she isn’t stuck out in this shit-stained cesspool of an economy still living down the fact that Harvard kicked her off their payroll for drinking on the job, is because of Tina. If you want to get Tina mad, mention the fact that the only reason she _got_ Amy that job is because she’s always, always, _always_ been Lorne’s favorite.

Unless you’re Jimmy Fallon. Then you can say whatever the fuck you want to Tina Fey.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s midnight and no one has gone home. Jimmy was in Tina’s classroom watching her work, bothering her while she typed and graded and readjusted her glasses, thin frames, tortoise-shell. She likes to be annoyed with Jimmy. She can’t stay mad at him for long.

And then Amy came in, said, “It’s been a fuck-ass _shitstain_ of a day, hasn’t it?” and Seth came looking for Amy not long afterward, the top button of his shirt undone and his hands working at his almost-all-the-way-loosened tie. Sudeikis wandered in a bit later, hair mussed from desk-fucking whatever blonde impressionable nineteen-year-old it was this time, and Forte and Armisen wanted to know where everyone was so they came in too, and somebody almost asked where Kristen and Bill were but then they all remembered they were on their honeymoon, a full seventy-two hours after Kristen’s divorce was finalized.

(“Way to whup ’em, cowboy,” Jason had said (slapping Bill hard on the shoulder)—“No such thing as common courtesy, I always say.”

“Yeah, you do,” Bill had replied.)

Amy brought alcohol—they drank around Tina’s desk, her papers left forgotten, the edge of her gradebook stained red with wine. “This is what I got kicked out of Harvard for,” Amy jokes, bitter, never not bitter about it. “Not so, our dear Thomas R. McCall.”

Will let out a harsh laugh, short. “You’re safe only as long as Tina’s here,” he told her. “She’ll fuck your way out of it, Ames.” (Jimmy, legs swinging on Tina’s desk, doesn’t laugh like the others; whirls around to her, agitated. Her lips twitch up.)

“Yeah?” she answers, voice calm, leaned back. “Think I can fuck your way out of those dips into the university budget you’ve been making?” She doesn’t say: _Think I would?_

“So she’s got Lorne on her side, big deal,” Jimmy jumps in, high-pitched laughter at the fringes of his words. “Is he even the real powerhouse around here, man?” He chuckles, “Nah, just ask Amy. There’s an alternate theory.”

“An alternate theory to the Head of Faculty heading-up the faculty?” Fred squints.

“Yep,” Jimmy laughs. “It’s that O’Brien holds all the real power in this place.”

“He’s been here so long,” Amy slurs, her legs across Seth’s lap, his knuckles gleefully tapping a rhythm across her knee with a Papermate pen. _Just now…_ “It’s not like he even _wants_ Lorne’s job, and yet…”

Jimmy nods. “He just…sits. Waits. Watches. He _knows_ things.”

There’s a pause, like for a minute this group of supposedly high-educated Boston professors chock-full of pretension, chock-full of depression, would actually believe anything other than cold hard reality. “Doesn’t matter,” Will reminds them, his personal brand of marblestone cynicism. “Tina’s got _him_ in her back pocket just as much as Lorne.”

“Yeah, I do,” Tina shoots back, and _watch_ : there it is, the bite: a decade spent in humiliation, scrabbling for purchase on something concrete, trying to write, trying to act, trying to get anywhere. Failing. _Wasted fucking talent_ , Amy whispers into Seth’s neck sometimes, because she talks about Tina a lot, man. She talks about Tina a lot.

Watch: “What do _you_ have, Will?” And the room goes silent. Tina keeps spinning in that desk chair of hers and it creaks, left, right, left, right, doesn’t stop; she stares him down. Nobody speaks.

This is Tina, after all. She drinks but she’s never really drunk at all.

 

 

 

 

 

Jimmy lags behind after everyone else has left, stands up and traces his fingers along the wooden edge of her desk. She straightens up files, tucks papers into folders, exits out of her browser, and he stays through it all; glancing up through thick eyelashes, glancing back down sheepishly.

“You’re really good at that, you know,” Tina quips absent-mindedly, pushing a folder into a cabinet.

Jimmy turns. “You mean coming up with a lame excuse to hang around after everyone else leaves?” He smiles, and Tina tries (tries) not to look, but his smile isn’t like the rest of theirs—it isn’t twisted, lopsided, a deformed limb on a dead oak tree of a mouth. It’s a kid’s smile: full-on, toothy. Bright eyes.

“No, actually, I was gonna say ‘annoying the fuck out of me,’” she replies. “And you haven’t even given me one yet.”

Jimmy’s startled—“Given you what?”

“An excuse,” Tina offers. “A lame one.”

Jimmy smiles with his mouth closed and leans his palms behind him on her desk, faces her. She stops shuffling with her papers and looks at him; doesn’t know why.

“Because,” he explains. “You’re funny when you drink.”

“I’m funny always.”

“You’re funni _er_ ,” he says, and smiles at her, the real smile, the Fallon smile. She tries not to look, but Tina knows better than anyone how easily trying can turn into failing.

 

 

 

 

 

On the three-year anniversary of Jimmy’s first day teaching at McCall, Amy meets up with Tina at the bar, takes a deep breath and says, “I’m having an affair with Seth.”

Tina doesn’t even glance at her—“I know,” she says. “Everyone knows.”

“How could you—” Amy starts. “It’s only been going on a _month_.”

“Yeah, and you’re even less subtle about it than Bill and Kristen were.” Tina is drinking hard whiskey—Scotch. Downs it like an Irish Catholic. (Rumor: O’Brien taught her how.)

Amy’s jaw sets; her fists clench. She almost smears a grin across her face. She’s going to change the subject, and it isn’t going to be pretty. “It’s been three years since Jimmy got here, Tina,” and she swallows. “When are you gonna—”

“He’s married, Amy.”

“So?” Amy laughs, scornful. “So am I. Look what good that did.”

Tina shifts in her seat, slight. “I have no interest in Fallon,” she says. “Or anyone, for that matter, despite what the majority of Boston might think.” She smiles, tight around the edges. “It’s the old maid’s life for me, dude.”

Amy ignores what Tina says, because she’s good at that. She presses on: “He’s the one pursuing you like fucking crazy. It’s not your fault if you fall prey to his charms.”

Tina slams her glass down on the table, harder than expected, angry _finally_ —“Chrissake, Amy, he doesn’t _have_ ‘charms.’”

Amy stares back for a moment at her best friend. Her _best friend._ And isn’t that just fucking miserable.

Then she nods. “You’re right,” she says. “I know that.” She sets down her purse and settles into her seat, begins kicking her feet against the bar. “I’m just not so fuckin’ sure _you_ do.”

 

 

 

 

 

In a week: Tina and Jimmy are grading essays. They sit together at a table in the staff room, the single overhead light flickering yellow and dim, the hallways outside long-since dark and empty. The refrigerator is humming in the corner, and Tina’s shoes are off. Jimmy, for his part, sat down next to instead of across from her.

It’s quiet; Jimmy looks intent on his work, his brow furrowed and his lip bit, this rare focused moment for him. Tina tries (fails) not to look at him, takes off her glasses, rubs her forehead. The light is starting to give her a headache. She puts her glasses back on. Scratches one of her ankles with the toe of her other foot.

She stares down at her essay, the neat rows in Times New Roman font size twelve staring up at her, bleeding into one another. “Jimmy,” she says, “can you read this?” She groans. “I can’t figure out what’s wrong with this sentence but something is definitely fucked, so.”

Jimmy leans into her space, close to her neck. “Where?” he asks, his voice innocent and earnest as he balances one hand on her chair, the blue open space right between her thighs. (Her skirt is ridden up beneath the shelter of the table; knees open, like a fucking lady.)

Tina, for her part, gasps. She could say she tried not to, but that would be a lie.

Jimmy looks up and meets her eyes, his face mere inches from hers, the tip of his nose so close to brushing her head, and his pupils dark dark black and wide and his breath is louder than she thought and in less than two seconds flat he is completely, _completely_ focused on the shape of her tongue as it traces her lips, and she realizes, _oh._ This was just a ruse.

“There,” she tells him, quick.

 

 

 

 

 

Tina goes in to see O’Brien unannounced. (Nobody goes in to see O’Brien unannounced. Tina does.)

She sits across from him at his desk while he types something out, while he runs a hand through his ginger hair. She says,

“What do you do,” (fiddling with the pens and pencils in the mug on his desk), “when you fuck someone you know you shouldn’t.”

He folds his hands together over his skinny stomach; crosses one leg. “You like him?”

She puffs out a breath, a sigh, the air lifting up the hair at the top of her forehead. “Yeah.”

O’Brien sighs something long and a slow like it’s half a groan, and leans back. He looks up at the ceiling for what seems like ages. He looks down again. “There’s an old Irish proverb which, if I’m not mistaken, was written precisely for your situation,” he offers, leaning forward on his knees, and Tina stops fiddling, looks up at him. Bright eyes.

“It goes like this,” he says: “You’re fucked.”


End file.
